Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Alfred's Basic and All in One Adult Piano Course Book #2

sinophillia,
I know what you mean about not playing a song that sounds different from what you expect it to be.

I felt the same way about Amazing Grace in book one....it was the first one that I didn't work on at all. I couldn't think how they managed to make such a beautiful song sound so ugly.

I was afraid if I learned it I might never enjoy that song again!

I will never be able to touch House of the Rising Sun. I learned it when I was playing guitar and played it to death. I can't even listen to The Animals version without switching it off.

Lol, I know what you mean, Earlofmar, though I never played in on guitar. Some songs (and I mean songs) just aren't meant for piano. House of the Rising Sun is one; La Bamba is another.

So far I'm really enjoying book 2. I absolutely love the song Introduction and Dance! Its so fun to play, and has totally rejuvenated my enthusiasm for playing. Light and Blue is another fun song. If I had a bit more time to prepare, I would have done one of them for my first recital. Great book, glad I stuck with Alfred's method.

Glad to hear it hamlet cat, I agree it is a good book, full of little gems.

Just catching up on this thread and checking in. As for myself, I've reached the mid-way point, or thereabouts, and presently learning Musette - a really nice little piece. It's probably my favourite in the book so far with Light and Blue a close second. Still needs a lot of work though!

Hello everyone

Also just checking in. I'm on Ragtime and just realized that I've been on this song for 3 WEEKS!!

I've been able to play it smoothly for some time but not at the speed that is on the CD. In fact, I can hardly move my fingers that fast.

Do most of you bring each song up to the speed on the CD (which seems excessively fast to me) or go on as soon as you can play it well.

I am working on other things (Thompson, scales and sight-reading) just so you don't think I only play this one thing over and over!

I am not going through the book sequentially but I have about four of the pieces done and struggle with the speed too. I have discussed this with my teacher but she did not seem overly concerned. My weaker left hand appears to be the
problem, so it's something I have to work on.

I don't think it is worthwhile to stay on one piece too long hoping my technique will improve and suddenly I can play it at speed. I will generally be on a piece a solid two weeks but after that I prefer to move on for each piece has it's challenge and that is what is to be gained. The whole speed thing will come eventually.

ALL DONE! The last page of Pachelbel wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. It's somewhat fast, but it rolls off the fingers easily for the most part. The hardest part of the last page for me was getting my RH 4th finger to work properly - getting enough strength behind it to be as loud as the rest of the notes while still keeping good control over it.

Today was my last lesson for a while. My teacher goes on vacation to visit her family in Czech republic every year around this time, and she won't be back for 6 weeks or so. She left me with some homework, though - Parisian Waltz by Robert Donahue (doesn't look too daunting), and my next uber long term super hard project - Chopin Nocturne, Op 9 No 2. YIKES! Yeah, that one is gonna take a while!



Don't sweat it. I was in the same boat, working on Alfred's but also working on two or three other pieces simultaneously, and I often took 3 or 4 weeks per Alfred's piece, sometimes more for the longer and harder ones.

I can't comment on the speed of the CD, as I don't have it. I don't remember playing Alexander's Ragtime SUPER fast...the only tempo marking on the piece is "Moderately." Do you have a metronome? I just went and plunked out a few bars of it...I think 100 bpm is probably sufficient, but that's just my opinion and I'm more or less guesstimating.

I don't recall playing Alexander's Ragtime Band extremely fast either.

I am currently on:

La Raspa
Mexican Hat Dance
He's A Jolly Good Fellow.

I am taking a dab at the D minor section.

I am also playing a few songs in Faber's Piano Literature Level 2

Thanks for the responses!

earlofmar, I took your advice and moved on. I've definitely been on this long enough.

gahdzila: I do have a metronome and the CD song was about 144, as far as I could tell. I'm playing it with confidence at 100, like you, so that's another reason to put this one to rest.

I'm glad there are book 2 people still out there!

Still here :-)

Up to danny boy!! Almost in book 3

Starbug, it must be nice to say "I'm almost done with book 2"!

Is Danny Boy a nice arrangement?

I am on Solace which is coming along pretty fast for me.

Next is the dreaded La Bamba. I thought about giving this one a pass after reading some of the comments, but then I listened to Undone's performance and really liked it.

La Bamba is a nice arrangement, I learned a difficult chord change in the piece and then left if for while. Hope to return to it one day, quite enjoyable.

Starbug, well done on getting to the end of book 2, I don't have that sort of determination.

Still working on on danny boy.. Yes I think its one of the better pieces in book 2. Nice left hand work to learn from.

Mostly been distracted with supplementals. And of those - Chopin op 28, 4. First Chopin in this beginners experience. Love it :-)

I've been working on La Bamba for awhile...it's more interesting to play than I thought it would be.

It has a lot of similar passages which just a small difference in notes or rythym. I think that is actually harder than a completely different passage.

This book really is good at teaching different techniques.

well done just4fun on completing La Bamba, I believe a few people struggle with the rhythm of this piece so good you got over that one.

I could not agree more about how good this book is for different techniques.

I made a decision and I don't want to move on to the next piece until I perfected it. Thanks to this decision I have been working on Bridal Chorus for weeks and progress is slow. I had many problems when I started playing this piece, but they seem to go away. Any thoughts, advice on how to tackle this song?

Mete, as with any piece causing difficulty we need to know the treble and bass lines really well. So that would be the first thing to look at, make sure both are in the memory banks and look for any area where you hesitate and work on this section playing each repeat very very slow. Practice both the treble and bass separately to look for and smooth out inconsistencies. You can also try slowing the whole thing down this will imprint finger positions into muscle memory, very surprising but it really works well.

The Bridal Chorus has a few chord changes with a fairly simple melody line so I would suspect (although you did not specify) the problem may be in the chord changes not being even, or the slight pause during the chord change mucking up the timing, So practicing left hand chord changes separately would help.

Lastly, some pieces just naturally take a long time to learn. I have been working on Chopin Etude No 3 (page 90) for going on three months and I still can't get it right. This is despite the fact I play more pieces out of book 3 than book 2. But I know I need to gain more experience to make the etude sound the way it should so I am patiently working at gaining that experience. So I would not advise you stop and wait to get a piece right before progressing. The Alfred pieces are not linear, building upon the previous works, rather they are explorations into different styles.

earlofmar,

As you pointed out, my problem is rapidly changing left hand chords. I think, in time, I will instantly recognize and translate them to the piano keys. Practice makes perfect!

I am working on 3-4 different pieces from other books at the moment. I don't want to hate one song by repeatedly playing it over and over. So, I alternate them and this leaves time for a piece to sink into memory.